User:Penguinpyro/story

From The Urban Dead Wiki

Contents 1 Chapter One: A Penguin Tale 2 Chapter Two: Silent Death 3 Chapter Three: Dead Man’s Hands 4 Chapter Four: Live Man’s Feet 5 Chapter Five: Gashes are red, Infections are Blue 6 Chapter Six: …But you’ll wish just those happened to you! 7 Chapter Seven: Up and at ‘Em! 8 Chapter Eight: A Typical Day in the Calm, Civilized City of Malton. 9 Chapter Nine: Pain is in the eye of the beholder

Chapter One: A Penguin Tale

“No seriously”, I said. “Experimental fireproofing chemicals. That’s why nothing in Malton burns down. The chemicals mutated all the people, but keep Malton from burning down.”
Dragei thought for a while.
“That doesn't explain th’ regenerative capabilities of zombies when introduced to a revive syringe.”
“Point. … Well, there goes that idea.”

I stared into the campfire. It was a cool day. Humid. Dark. The sounds of the living dead ambling about rustled outside, with the occasional groan followed by a heart-rending scream. A typical day in Malton.
The campfire was an escape from all that. Dry, warm, bright, some might say even “loving” what with its unconditional gift of light and heat. At least I would. Suddenly, the sounds of cracking wood rumbled below us. Not good. Usually it was somebody else’s business.
We both stared at the fire. Today, the barricades falling was our business.
Dragei looked at me, eye to eye. I looked down, into the flames…. It was a shame, having to extinguish such a lovely fire. All that time and effort I put….
“Damn it. If you’re not going to do it, I will!”
Dragei immediately dumped debris over the fire and stamped on it. The room went dark. We slowly walked over to the room’s entrance.
Dragei must have seen the look on my face, as he told me, “We dun have time to enjoy th’ fire, peng. If we left it burning, ya know what’d happen.”
A short, faint groan emerged from the hallway. The perfectly dark hallway. I froze. Shit. How did they climb four stories so fast? How many were there?

Dragei stepped forward.
Nikulas Dragei was a young Scottish man of average height and build. He had a tendency to mull over his words before speaking, even in emergencies, and he wasn’t particularly aware of his environment, so he didn’t patrol the streets much. Indoors and in close quarters, however, him and his Scottish claymore were lifesavers. Literally.

A decayed, dull hand reached through the door. Dragei immediately unsheathed his four-foot claymore and brought it down on the hand, ripping the fingers off.
Immediately, a bony, green, and moldy head and shoulders lunged out at Dragei with a guttural, hollow scream. Dragei immediately blocked the other hand with the inner blade of his claymore and counter attack with a swing at the zed’s head. The zombie parried with both forearms, and Dragei immediately then launched a powerful side kick at the zombie’s right knee, shattering it and snapping its calf backwards with a sickening crunch. Dragei used the zed’s resultant stumble to place a large gash in its neck.
The zed, to its credit, resumed its assault despite losing a leg and half its neck, and Dragei was reduced to rapidly parrying its claws away.
After a few failed stirkes, the zed managed to slash Dragei’s sword arm with its claws, splattering a respectable amount blood on Dragei’s shirt. Dragei switched the sword to his left arm and used the hilt to pummel, pummel and pummel the zombie’s head away until the head literally fell of its damaged neck with another dusty snap. Dragei withdrew from the corpse, and turned towards me. He clasped his injured arm.
“….Shite. A little help here, peng!”
I immediately wrapped up Dragei’s arm with a first-aid kit.

There was more groaning and fighting downstairs.

We immediately barreled through the hall and down the stairs. On the third floor, we found Kane Izzy’s dead body, surrounded by three freshly dead corpses and a lot of knives. Three zombies. Yep. That’s about what Kane Izzy was worth. Not a bad day for Kane Izzy. Except that he was dead. That was bad.
I looked around. “D, next floor. Nothing here. It’s not wrecked, so we know the zombies are probably busy downstairs.”
We jumped down another set of stairs.
It appeared that there was nothing here too. All quiet.
“Where did all the zombies go?”
“I have no idea, peng. They definitely want to eat us before they ruin the building. Be on guard.”
“Obviously. Grrrraah! We rest in a reclaimed NT for three hours and they immediately want our asses. Lovely!”
“There’s only one thing we kin…”
That’s when five zombies just burst out of the rooms into the hallway and at us. I immediately whipped out my pistol and got off about three shots into the head of the nearest zombie. It crashed to the floor, and the others jumped over the corpse. The pistol was spent, so I dropped it. Narrow corridors. Not Dragei’s best spot, with his giant claymore and all. He managed to hack off a zombie’s hand, and was bitten in return. I grabbed my fire axe and split that zombie’s head. It released Dragei’s shoulder and fell to the floor in a heap. Dragei then took out his shotgun and fired a round into a third zombie. It withstood the blast and slashed him in the chest.
Dragei stumbled backward, blood all over his arms. I tried to swing at that zombie, but before I could, the fourth one, behind it, lunged past it and hit me in the face. All I could see then was blood, and it really hurt, so I waved my axe wildly and apparently fended them off, since I didn’t get hit any more.
“Peng, watch out!”
That was kind of hard to do, what with my face slashed off and all. I whipped out my last good pistol and immediately unloaded all six rounds into the zombie, and got a satisfying scream in return. I was slashed in the arms again and again, and managed to push back at the zombies. I heard Dragei yelling as he stabbed a zombie. I would have wiped the blood off my face so I could see, but then a zombie tackled me and I passed out in a burst of agony.

I stood up. Since the average zombie has rather poor powers of memory, I vaguely recalled doing the usual as-a-zombie routine: walking to a nearby revive point, taking out my anger on a random zombie, plaintively yelling out “MRH?” to any passing survivor.
I woke up, blood caked on my front. I scraped the blood from my face, walked over to a nearby junkyard and staggered over the barricades.
There, Doctor Freakenstein, with his gas mask and ever-ready shotgun, his hands leaning on a half-broken wooden table with a map on it, was gesturing at and talking to Kane Izzy, Otterslayer, Dragei, Barbour and Bdthemag. Dragei’s newly wrapped wounds suggested that he died during that last fight, too. Can’t blame him. Three on one in a tight space is always bad odds. Otterslayer immediately began fixing up my injuries with a first aid kit. Good old Otterslayer. A fine medic and Doctor Freak’s apprentice. He was fast becoming an expert at completely avoiding injury and reviving tons of people, just like the good Doctor himself.
“Devonshire has fallen, peng.”, Doc explained.
“Well, at least we put up a decent fight while we were at it.” I replied.

Bdthemag cut in. “SIR WHAT ARE OUR ORDERS?!”

Bdthemag was, and still is, an interesting fellow. He wore a helmet and standard infantry armor over civvies, and always carried around a cooler full of Doctor Pepper soda, which he took sips from. I think he had some kind of allergic reaction to it that made him really hyperactive, because Doctor Pepper doesn’t have enough caffeine and sugar to justify that much pep. Anyway, Bdthemag was a valuable member of the group, since his… abundant energy allowed him to explore a vast amount of area every day and fight really fiercely, not to mention he provided morale in bad times with his enthusiasm.

I thought a while. “Alright, we’ll need to withdraw from central Rhodenbank. Whole place has gone to hell.”
I glanced at the map.
“About here looks good.” I pointed at Tompsett Library. “Meet here, guys.”
“SIR yes sir!” Bdthemag stood at attention.
“Got it”, said Otterslayer as he finished patching my wounds.
Dragei and Doc nodded at me and went back to examining the map.
“Roger that. Ready to scalp some more zombies.” Barbour put away a switchblade he was playing with.
Barbour was the captain of Psychiatric Squad, which destroyed PKers and assisted in recon and anti-zombie missions. And while I’m on the topic of rank, I might mention that Dragei was the captain of Sanitation Squad (defense against zombies) and Doctor Freak was captain of Relief Squad (healing and revives). All three of them truly deserved it.

Anyway, Barbour. Barbour was a highly productive zombie hunter and a humble one at that. He was friendly and dryly humorous outside of combat, which contrasted with his “war face”– professional, careful and extremely lethal. He always carried a ton of pistols, with which he was a crack shot. Everyone respected him for his accuracy with his pistols.

All six of us leaped out of the junkyard and landed softly in the carpark south of us. Only a few, distracted zombies around. We moved south to Tompsett Library, and set up camp there. The barricades were just low enough to give us entrance. No zombies around. Library was a very disorganized, but that was the way most of Malton was after the end of civilization.
“Night guys.” Doc Freak went upstairs and didn’t come back.
“I’m going to bed, too.” Barbour followed Doc.
“Now would be a good time to check our surroundings”, Dragei said.
“Right. I’ll start!” yelled Bdthemag.
Bdthemag then immediately leaped from a library window into the club south of us, Club Greene. A few minutes passed. He didn’t come back.
I whispered, “Guys, should we check on him?”
We decided to move south. Doc and Barbour could hold the fort well enough in the library. We all leaped into Club Greene. It was odd, being used to leaping from building to building like this. It felt like driving, except without the need to prepare. I wonder what Mom and Dad would think?
The club was lit. We immediately stumbled upon a damaged but functioning generator. I decided to take point with my fire axe. Otter took out a shotgun and Dragei his signature claymore.
We slowly searched the place. No sign of Bdthemag.
There was shouting in the lobby, however. I led the team towards the stairs down and we all slowly crept down. I quickly glanced into the club lobby.
From what I could tell, Bdthemag was bleeding and hiding behind a vending machine. Several armed survivors with guns were yelling obscenities at him. We were on their left side, and they weren’t looking.
I whispered, “Shit. Pkers!” People Killers. The worst murdering scum in all of Malton, who preyed on their fellow living humans for various, evil reasons.
Otter softly growled, “Let’s take ‘em apart.”
“Not so fast, they have guns…. Dragei, ideas?”
“We burst in and try to take ‘em in close combat.”
“Sounds good to me. Go!”
We immediately rushed into the room. Dragei yelled and leaped at a Pker, making a devastating slash at his back, spraying blood everywhere. I myself grabbed a Pker from behind and slashed his neck with my axe. Otter simply unloaded a shell each into the remaining two.
The Pkers immediately counter attacked. The ones Otter shot apparently had flak jackets, as they didn’t seem too worse the wear for his attack and fired back at him, striking him several times. Dragei yelled again and knocked one of their pistols away with his claymore. Bdthemag took the opportunity to rush the other one from behind, stabbing him several times in the back.

The Pker that Dragei slashed got up and started shooting at Bd. I immediately threw my fire axe at him, throwing off his aim. Dragei then turned around and – believe it or not- took the guy’s head off with a double-handed swing. Blood spurted everywhere.
Otterslayer collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain.
Bdthemag and I ran towards him to stabilize him, while Dragei got into a fistfight with the Pker he disarmed.
He was losing, until Bdthemag looked up from Otter and said, “Oh, right!”, and shot the last Pker multiple times with a revolver. The Pker staggered back, giving enough room for Dragei to kick him in the groin, making him double over.
Dragei picked up his claymore, (apparently he was disarmed by the Pker) and cut the Pker open. The last body fell hard onto the lobby floor.

Otter recovered well from the injuries. He helped us patch him up, and all four of us looted the Pkers’ remains and dumped their bodies from the building.
Bdthemag exclaimed, “A hard day’s work, huh guys?”
Dragei glared at him. “…”
“Never mind.”

We returned to the library after half an hour of tending our injuries.
Barbour looked rather groggy and stared at us as we returned, bloody and proud. “Did you have to make so much noise in there? You woke me up!”

The next morning. I woke up, bright and early. Thankfully, my improvised bed of books wasn’t too bloody from the last day’s combat. No internal bleeding. Goody.

Doc opened the door.
“Are you awake yet? We have a problem!”
I grabbed all my equipment and headed downstairs, axe in hand.
Barbour, Bdthemag and Kane (Kane must have returned while I was sleeping) were at the barricades, feverishly repairing it. The sounds and movement of the barricades indicated that a good number of zombies were knocking on our doors. Doc, as usual, disappeared immediately. Good thing, too. He had to stay alive to revive us in case it all went to shit. And occasionally to keep zombies from defiling our corpses. Good man, the Doctor.

I helped them with the barricades. It appeared that the barricades were falling faster than we could repair them. Dammit!
Just when it seemed the doors would explode, we heard a lot of gunshots outside. The banging on the barricades somewhat subsided. Help was at hand.

The doors still exploded, in a pretty blast of wood splinters. I covered my face and leapt forward to face the zombies. They ran into the doors with predictable speed. I hacked my way into one of them, and then spun to slash another. I had to pull back after I lost my balance from the spin, however.
Barbour didn’t even flinch. He whipped out two pistols and began unloading into some zed three feet from his face. He gracefully dodged the zombies’ claws and kept them at bay by quickly pulling out more pistols when he ran out.
I didn’t have time to enjoy the show. I slammed my axe into another zombie. Kane’s knives took its head off.
We used the door as a chokepoint, until there were no zombies left. I noticed a lot of bullets came from outside as well.
Otter fixed up what minor injuries the team had. I dumped the zombie bodies out and looked outside. Masterorion, one of our newer members, and Chaostraveler stood on top of a bus by the curb-side, with a hunting rifle and shotgun, respectively.
Chaostraveler looked very beat-up, but was still composed and standing tall. “Gentlemen…”, he wheezed, “We have one *hell* of a situation on our hands.”

Chapter Two: Silent Death

I yelled, “Chaos? What’s going on? Something big?” I was getting worried.
“Yes. Something very, very big!” Chaostraveler said. He leapt off the bus, winced from his wounds and carefully walked into the library.
Chaostraveler was a meticulous planner and one of the more outgoing members of the team. Chaos, as I called him, was an enthusiastic Anti-Zombie Squadder, known for his skill with using both a fire axe and a bokken, a kind of surprisingly deadly wooden katana. He sometimes made careless mistakes (like me), but his enthusiasm and general awareness of situations more than made up for that.
He continued. “The Undeadites are making a massive offensive against Rhodenbank. They’ve already destroyed Dulston and now they’re coming for us!”
“That’s bad, but I wouldn’t describe it as a ‘hell of a situation.’ It’s survivable. Even if we die, we’ll just get up again. And possibly relocate elsewhere.”
“That’s not all of it. The zombies are learning how to sneak up on survivors! They’re getting smarter AGAIN!”
“What? You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. They got me and almost got Masterorion when they played dead outside of Starr NT.”
“… by Kevan!. That explains what happened in Devonshire!”
“What happened in Devonshire?”
I explained as we used our first aid kits on Chaos “Me and Dragei went downstairs after they took down the barricades. They took down Kane without us knowing. Kane put up a good fight, but we didn’t hear it. When we went to the second floor, I thought the coast was clear. No groaning, no walking, no lurching or ransacking or shit. Then, they burst out of the rooms and ambushed us! Look, Chaos, do you know what this means!”
Chaos turned pale. “We can’t count on detecting them first! We’re screwed when responding to a break-in in another building and we’ll take heavier losses from ambushes when reclaiming a building.”
Barbour interrupted, “We’ll have to think of appropriate responses. In the meantime, let’s fix these barricades.”
I said, “Right. Let’s fix these barricades.”
We reinforced the barricades to what some might call “extremely heavily barricaded.” Masterorion and Barbour, being the only ones with more than a little ammo, stood guard on the roof as sharpshooters. The rest of us, Bdthemag, Dragei, Chaos Kane, Otter (recovered fully from last night) and I hunkered down on the first floor. The team was starting to get jittery. There weren’t any other survivors in sight. That usually happened right before we all die. “What’s the situation outside, Chaos?” I asked.
“Not good. This building, the club south of here, and the factory north of here are the only unruined buildings for four blocks.”
“Errrrrgh! Lovely…. Remember, AZS, Zombies are here today and gun tomorrow!” My battle cry was comforting enough.
Bdthemag screamed, “Let’s MURDERFY those bastards!”
Dragei just sighed.

Soon enough, the zombies did what they usually do in the presence of only one target in sight: they rushed us. I heard the staccato cry of gunfire from the rooftops. Suddenly, a body fell from the roof and hit the ground hard with a resounded WHOMP. I looked out a hole in a wall and saw that it was Barbour.
Oh shit. Bad. Very bad.
Masterorion soon burst into the first floor, covered in sweat and clutching a wound in his abdomen. We all turned around.
“Two psychopaths on the rooftops. Two of ‘em! They shot Barbour, and I managed to shoot one. So watch out for the other one!”
I barely had time to react to this news when a person I didn’t know jumped down the stairs. I immediately abandoned the barricades and leapt behind a bookcase. A few gunshots rang out, but fortunately I didn’t hear any screams of pain. I peered sideways to see that Kane Izzy was straddled on top of the psychopath, knifing away at his head.

That taken care of, I immediately leapt back to the barricades. The zombies were really doing a number on us. Otter had a sharp pole with which he was stabbing zombies through the barricade. The rest of us were doing our best to ram various pieces of furniture against the windows and doors. A rotting hand burst through the front door I was manning, and I applied my fire axe to it. Dammit. That shooter cost me. The ten or so seconds I abandoned the barricades, it was already knocked down to lightly barricaded.
“Kane, get the hell back here!” I yelled.
Kane stopped mutilating the gunman’s remains, and ran back beside me to continue barricading. A few minutes of pounding. Kane yelled, “These barricades won’t last long! Time to get personal!”, stepped back and readied his foot-long bowie knives.
I concurred. “Well gentlemen, this is the end…for now!”
The zombies kicked over the door while I was getting some more chairs. Kane was not so fortunate and was knocked back somewhat by the falling barricade. He recovered, parried the first zombie’s strikes, was forced back by a particularly vicious blow, and staggered back towards me. Otter immediately unloaded his shotgun, destroying the zombie, and two more took its place.
I attempted to fend off a zombie with a chair, prodding it in the head. A rather unwise move, since it ripped the chair in half with a good slash. I took out my trusty fire axe in my right hand and lunged at the zombie, giving it a good cut to the midsection. It struck at my shoulders, and I parried with the remains of the chair in my left hand.
Chaos, despite his wounds, cut open the zombie’s neck with his fire axe, in his right hand, and used the bokken in his left hand to parry a few strikes from another zombie from behind. I used the opportunity to kick the zombie in the shins, admittedly not doing much, and also slashed the zombie in the head. It staggered back enough for Chaos and me to cut it down in a flurry of blows. Otter screamed, “Guys! Reloading!… Guys! Duck!”
I immediately jumped away from a charging zombie, which disappeared in a cloud of dust from the shotgun. The shotgun clicked. Empty. That zombie got back up and I savagely hacked at its skull, bringing it down. Kane’s whirlwind of blades, Chaostraveler’s bokken and axe combo, Bdthemag’s flurry of stabs and my opportunistic fire axe moments weren’t enough to take on the rapidly growing mob of zombies, though.

I saw Chaos fall over dead with a fresh bite wound in his neck. Shit. Very bad. Bdthemag stepped towards the door with a pistol and fired a few rounds into a zombie, hitting it once. He threw the pistol away and resumed knifing another zombie.
I didn’t see any sign of Masterorion behind me until he fired a round clean into the head of a zombie I was about to engage. It staggered forward, possibly not yet re-dead, so I hilt-bashed its skull to ensure its demise. It collapsed to the floor.

The area was getting thick with bodies, about a dozen. The melee continued. Chaos, Bd and Kane had fallen, and Otter disappeared, quite wisely. I had been clawed about five times and was about to go into shock. Masterorion was reduced to rifle-butting away zombies, to not much effect. Dragei was barely fending off three zombies at once.
I had to do something.
“Fuck this! To the second floor!” We immediately turned and ran into the second floor of the library. I threw a few chairs down the stairs to slow them down before abruptly collapsing. My legs couldn’t hold me, and I knew I was in shock.
A sweat-drenched Dragei stepped past me and began swinging wildly at the approaching zombies. Masterorion calmly but worriedly tried to decide between shooting at the zombies and tending to me.
I told him, “Don’t mind me, mast, I still have time. Stop them! Stop them all!” There was more shooting and slashing, followed by the always dreadful click of an empty firearm. I heard a human body thump onto the floor with a groan, and I hoped it wasn’t either of them. I couldn’t see anything but the roof and a bit of my own blood.
I took out my last and only flare gun. I definitely couldn’t use it in this state but it could do something. It must have been the shock going to my head, because I threw it in the direction whoever was left fighting, with the belief that they would use it.
Surprisingly enough, I heard a flare launch and a zombie screaming before being silenced by a…”thwip” sound…? And another. Huh.
I felt someone roughly wrapping up my wounds. It was the Doc! I suppose he had returned and finished off the last few zombies with his modified syringe-firing shotgun. My worries taken care of, I passed out…

I woke up in St. Ninian’s Hospital in Pescodside. Otter was standing guard over a bunch of pink-ish (from washed-off blood) hospital beds with a shotgun. To my sides, in those beds, were Dragei, Bdthemag, Kane Izzy, Chaostraveler and Masterorion, all asleep, because if they were dead, they wouldn’t be occupying valuable hospital bed real estate.

Doc was one of the few survivors who could get away with claiming two hospital wards. Most survivor groups and individuals only got to call one ward or bed. It was probably because the AZS was big enough to merit two, and because few people wanted to mess with a syringe-shotgun-wielding bloody-lab-coat-wearing gas-mask surgeon.
I hurt like hell all over, likely because even Doc and Otter couldn’t get enough first aid kits for all of us. Fortunately, I had my own in my backpack. I took them out and gave them to Otter to use.
I grabbed Chaostraveler’s shoulders and gave him a rough shake to wake him up.
He practically rolled out of bed and looked up at me.
I said, “We need to talk.”

I sighed. “So, the zombies in Rhodenbank have learned to move quietly, hide behind cover and pretend to be corpses. They now have the defensive advantage over us.”
Chaos looked into the distance. “Pretty much.”
“Where the hell did they learn THAT?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, from what I’ve heard before, new behavior tends to spread like wildfire among the rotting masses. There’s no way we can stop the zombies from being stealthy…. We’ll have to cope with it and suck up the casualties.”
Chaos wrinkled his brow. Chaos was a man newly out of his teens, like most of us. Unlike most of us, he worried about what would happen next instead of about what was happening now, an unusual attitude after an apocalpyse. Staring into the fog instead of at the ground, as it were. I could relate.
“Maybe we could focus on our scouting. Find a nice, safe suburb and track the zombies there carefully.”
I thought for a while. “Perhaps. In any case we’ll have to find a good suburb to recuperate and get supplies. For now, we’ll stay in Pescodside.”

The next few days were a poorly-coordinated mess of forays into Rhodenbank. The zombies did, indeed, get smarter, as several times our patrols barely avoided ambush. We didn’t get much done, admittedly. We could barely walk into buildings without rotters bursting out of the shadows and trying to munch on us from behind.
On the plus side, we restocked on ammunition and medical supplies.
We made Waish NT our temporary headquarters. It was relatively safe. The raging hordes in Rhodenbank had decided to strike Pashenton and Earletown instead.

Waish NT was dusty and occupied by quite a few survivors. We claimed an empty, dusty meeting room on the third floor. More than a dozen of us occupied the scratched-up, sad leather chairs. Chaostraveler. Bdthemag. Barbour. Dragei. Doctor Freakenstein. Kane Izzy. Masterorion.
Jonas Mandrake, who was gathering supplies in Pescodside the last few days. Gunslinger, who was off in north Rhodenbank fighting a guerilla war against the zed (he won as much as a single man can).
Sentinell, who usually worked behind the scenes, but was an expert at reclaiming buildings and lighting up suburbs.
A few fresh recruits we told to stay away from the fighting in Rhodenbank: Boomtastic, Masuhiro, Fishtastico, Mihangel, Xoxx.
And me.
“Gentlemen… where to?”
I presented them with tactical analyses of several candidate suburbs I downloaded off my mobile phone. A bit awkward, passing the phone around, but it would do.

Ten hands voted. Ultimately, the will of the squad voted on Pimbank, a good choice, in my opinion, due to its simple layout, relatively calm status and conveniently placed mall, Tynte. Right then, Pimbank it was. We would ship out in a few days.
In my head, the lights of Tynte mall were sunbeams breaking open the gloomy thunderclouds of thoughts of hidden, silent zombies.
They adapted. They learned. We adapted. We learned. The answer to the silent death lay not in the battlefield, but in the calm lights of our new training grounds. Let’s do this.

Chapter Three: Dead Man’s Hands

Grasping it with both hands, Dragei smashed his claymore down on the zombie, a snarl on his face. The rotter immediately fell limp and was ripped nearly in half from the vicious blow. I immediately grabbed the body, dragged it over to the window, and roughly forced it out. There was a satisfying thump below.
Dragei carefully examined his bloody sword.
“Ach. My blade is gettin’ dull. Best Ah sharpen an’ fix it…. Ah’ll be at th’ factory.”
I waved as he took a running jump out the window.
I was alone now. Everyone else was sleeping or away patrolling on this foggy Malton night.

I wandered around Pescodside, jumping across streets, window to window. The AZS would move into Pimbank tomorrow. I figured I’d better look for something to clean up before I go.
I ran into Headland Fire Station. It was a rather dingy place. I liked to check out fire stations now and then. See what kind of people were in it.
Today, it was dead people in Headland Fire Station. As usual, it looked deserted, and then proved to be an ambush. They even left the generator on and undamaged. Amazing. Three of them. The first one lunged at me. I emptied a pistol into it, took out another pistol and emptied that into the next zombie. The last one noticed its fallen comrades and was bright enough to run into another room. I walked after it, fire axe in hand.
Perhaps I didn’t notice the fourth zombie hiding in that room. Perhaps I didn’t notice the damage my fire axe had incurred over the years, even with proper maintenance. Perhaps I failed to proceed cautiously, as I should have under the circumstances.
In any case, my fire axe snapped, as a zombie waiting in ambush in the other room covered for the zombie I was chasing. I slammed my axe against its head in a panic, and the axe handle simply snapped from overuse. The zombie then slashed my chest, and I backed away. I tried to take out a pistol and put some distance between me and the zombies, but the zombie I was chasing leapt at me, biting my shoulder. I yelled and blew its head off. The last zombie then slashed my face, and dug into me, laughing as it did so.

I fell into a bleak darkness. I was dead again. Sometimes it felt like entering a dream-world. I despaired. It was hard. I was killed for almost nothing, by almost nothing. I lost my main means of defense and my livelihood and my keepsake, my fire axe. They outsmarted me, the dead men. It was all over nothing. It all came to nothing. Why live? Fuck this shit. I couldn’t go on.

Then I remembered, I *had* to go on. There were evil beings out there preying on innocents, and those beings needed a good killing. I could not rest. My journey into the night had to continue, at all costs. I rose to the surface of the waters of despair. There were faces that needed a good kicking off! I could not rest while those faces went un-kicked-off!

When I woke up, it was as a human. The mold of the graveyard was all over me. I stood up, apparently facing the unfamiliar territory of Pimbank- Tynte Mall. It was mostly ruined, with two corners still holding out, doubtlessly full of survivors being slaughtered by the living dead. God, how I missed West Grayside and its pleasant and stability. But it was too unpredictable and quite dull, having to rely on the tides of fortune in a single suburb and not seeing anything new. Still, I missed dull sometimes. The screams of the dying in Tynte reminded me of that.

I found out it was roughly two weeks that I went missing. I had lost the will to survive, and it cost me.
Presently, the suburb was under attack and the AZS was taking decent casualties. I strolled into Evershed Cinema. Dragei, Chaostraveler and Kane Izzy were there together in Theater Five. They looked happy to see me, but didn’t make much out of it.
“Welcome back peng.”
“Hey P.”
“Peng. How’s it going?”
A few more greetings later, I got the update from Kane. The zombies here were beginning to pick up the new behavior, and they managed to overrun the outlying parts of the suburb by ambushing survivors. The inner suburb, with the heavily defended mall, only fell from a coordinated attack very recently.
The AZS was still in good shape, but the casualties were picking up fast. On top of the bad news, a large group of zombies, apparently emboldened by their new powers of stealth, launched a Big Bash 3, a large and wild party to tour around and wreck all of Malton. They were approaching Pimbank.
Jonas Mandrake, a supportive and friendly German fellow, proposed that we shift locations, lest we be instantly overwhelmed and eaten by the Big Bash. I agreed, and we changed locations to Ruddlebank, an obscure suburb in the southwest corner of Malton, home to Tompson Mall. The Big Bash had already visited there, and it had recovered, so it could shelter us for a while, as the Bash didn’t (presumably) visit the same place twice.

I didn’t spend long in Pimbank. For the most part, it was maintaining a few barricades and fighting off the odd break-in. I felt incomplete without my fire axe, but there were no unruined Fire Stations nearby. I longed for a new fire axe. In the meantime, I was probably screwed if caught alone in close combat. It was a problem I should fix right away. We moved to Ruddlebank, just as the entire suburb collapses under the weight of ferals following alongside the Big Bash.

Ruddlebank. First place I looked for supplies was Tompson Mall.

In pre-apocalypse times, malls were fairly orderly, noisy places to socialize and explore. Obviously, not the case today.

Everyone was either quietly snooping around looking for supplies, or resting in long-abandoned, plundered stores. Much like in hospitals, individuals or small groups implicitly claimed each store. Larger groups might get multiple stores. But no one ever claimed the most important areas- the gun stores, drugstores and hardware stores- the ones that everyone depended on. That was the survivor code.

I was looking for a new fire axe. Obviously. The mall was dusty, but not filthy. Some survivors cleaned the areas around them while idling, resulting in a relatively clean, if disorderly, mall. I passed by a cracked mirror, turned and stopped.

There I was, dirty, dusty and dressed, like most other survivors, in a collection of blood-caked, ripped, patched and filthy rags that passed for clothes. Matted long black hair, a ash-blacked, heavily tanned face with Asian features, tattered open black coat and white shirt underneath, white belt, black pants, and a pair of very conspicuous orange shoes. That’s why they called me penguin.
I looted the clothing stores. Still a massive selection of clothes despite the years of looting.
I replaced my clothes, ditched the blood-soaked old ones, got a black belt instead of a white one, and grabbed a dull orange-brown pair of boots. I washed and styled my messy hair with a spare sink in the bathrooms, being sure not to disturb the ash on my face. I honestly looked better with it, and hygiene was optional in a world where all the survivors were immune to non-zombie-based diseases and poisons.

Looking a decent bit better, it was time for a new fire axe. I walked into the hardware store, all littered with toppled shelves and half-empty supply crates. Thirty minutes of searching and discarding crappy axes, I got myself a rather typical fire axe, three cans of spray and five flare guns.
Penguinpyro was back in business.

We picked out Hinckesman Bank as an informal headquarters. It was dark, but well-guarded, with several lone survivors as well as us watching the doors.
After we got settled in, Barbour said, “There’s plenty Psycho Killers in and around Tompson Mall. They require death.”
I concurred.
Barbour gathered Otterslayer, Jonas Mandrake, Boomtastic and Fishtastico, and patrolled around for PKers. They created quite the pile of corpses.
But I had better things to do. I had to find a way to counter the new zombie tactics. I took Chaostraveler, Bdthemag, Dragei, Kane Izzy and Masterorion on a hunt for zombies. Bdthemag was to, as AZS combat publicist, contacting the local survivor groups and gathering important information about the new zombie menace. The rest of us stalked zombies.

To be sure, there was little sign of quiet zombies. Most of them were obnoxious, obvious and loud as ever. The quiet behavior hadn’t spread yet.
On the second day of observation, Chaostraveler and I were on the rooftop of Sly Place PD. There we saw a zombie down below moving quite quietly. It moved with a rather uncharacteristic gentleness of feet. Barely a sound. Short of getting super-hearing or laying noisy traps, it would be impossible to counter that.
It sneaked up to a mob of zombies that was banging on the doors of St. Piran’s church. Chaos and I crawled after it.
The zombie abruptly began speaking to the mob. “Ah gan gab rah hah ga na zahn maggan!” It meant, I can teach you to move without sound.
A rather careless thing of me to do, but upon hearing that I immediately decided to break up the meeting. I took very careful aim and emptied a pistol into the zombie’s head. It slumped to the floor without further ado. Some of the mob of zombies shifted their attention to banging on the doors of Sly PD. I just wasted ammo delaying the spread of zombie infiltration tactics by a few hours, if that. Chaostraveler just shrugged.

Not anything else happened of note and not much to fight. On the third day, my observation team moved back to Hinckesman Bank. We had set up some folding chairs for meetings and such. Jonas immediately approached me.
“We found something strange on some of the Pkers. Some of them had small business cards that said ‘ZPK’.”
“ZPK?”, I asked. “What’s that?”
Jonas replied, “I have no idea. I asked around, and no one’s heard of a group or event called ZPK.”
“Huh. I wonder what that stands for. Z usually stands for zombie… PK usually stands for Psychopath Killer. Put together…”
We paused. Jonas looked at me. “We’re dealing with a Zombie-Pker alliance. That’s not good.”
“… Well then. We have only two options, Jonas. Kick them out of town, or leave.”
“I’m not leaving for a bunch of Pkers who can barely kill us back properly. You say the word, we’ll take their heads off.”

I announced the news to the whole team.
“Guys, we’ve stumbled upon what we think is a secret Pker-zombie organization… normally, we ought to kill them all, burn their stuff and drive them out of town, but it’s a little odd that they are completely in hiding. Not even a mention of their name, other than what we found.” Bdthemag leapt up out of his chair. “Ooh! We get to hit their head on desks and tell them who number two works for!”
“Er… we’ll be interrogating them, BD. Probably not that brutally….Alright, I’ll be picking out a few of you to help me with this. The rest of you will secure the suburb and patrol for Pkers. We’re going to need all the info we can get.”
The meeting adjourned, and a dozen rears got off folding chairs and onto the mission.

The set-up was simple. We pick a ZPK-card-carrying Pker, beat him into submission, and then went into diplomacy. If diplomacy failed, we went into heads and desks.
You could tell someone was a Pker at just a glance through the way they moved. They were secretive, very anti-social and always had that look of pure destructive rage in their eyes. Plus, they gave off bad “vibes.” It was hard to describe it as anything else, but those of us who spent more than a little time in the bounty hunting profession developed the intuitive ability to feel “vibes” off of Pkers we saw. Bounter Hunters called it “The Rogue’s Gallery effect.” Believe it or not. We did.

This guy was locally known as “DHG”. We weren’t sure why. Kane, Barbour and I saw him run off into the Hobby Building, in the westernmost section of Ruddlebank. A minute later, we ran into the building as well. It was utterly abandoned, and the ugly brown wallpaper was peeling everywhere.
I peeked around a corner. DHG was leaning against a wall with a pistol. Armed. We would have to be careful. He probably suspected someone unwanted nearby, judging from his expression.
“Shit. He’s armed. Probably heard us on the way in.” I whispered.
Barbour took out a switchblade.
“There’s no need for a gunfight”, he muttered.
Kane looked at the small knife.
“That’s not a knife, mate, this is a knife!”, he quietly giggled as a he drew a pair of bowie knives. “Up and at em, *mate*”, Barbour sarcastically whispered.
Kane leaped into the room. DHG swore and shot at Kane, to no effect, as Kane relieved him of his weapon a split second before. DHG tried to pull out a knife of his own, but Kane immediately plunged a bowie knive into DHG’s chest and rammed his knee into DHG’s back as DHG turned. DHG rolled away, and drew his knife. Kane easily parried the first strike and nearly slashed DHG’s hand apart in a rapid counter attack. Kane then gave DHG a solid punch in the jaw, which instantly floored him. The murderer was down for the count.

DHG came to rather quickly. All experienced survivors in Malton quickly developed the talent of recovering from head trauma in moments, and DHG was not an exception. We already had him tied to the top of a table with some old rope.
Barbour immediately leaned over him and grabbed his collar. Kane was silent and holding a baseball bat.
“Accept this as my apology, little bastard.”
I immediately intervened. “Whoa there Barbour, we’re not savages. We can talk like respectable gentlemen. Can’t we, man?”
It was time to get the old good-cop, bad cop-routine out. I used to be a rookie police officer- funny how life worked.
“You can suck my dickhole. I’m dickholeguy… so that makes four of us here”, the Pker replied.
Barbour looked at Kane. Kane wasted no time in applying a baseball bat to DHG’s stomach. DHG grunted in pain.
I intervened again. “Wait, Kane, cut that out. He can’t talk if he’s in pain. Come on. Talk and we let you go. Easy peasy. No need for viol…”
“Fuck you man.”
Kane baseball-batted him again.
“K.I. , dude, you’re enjoying this a little too much.”
“It’s not my fault. He’s giving us shit, and I’m giving it back to him.”
“Well, let him talk all he wants, it won’t hurt us.’
The Pker grunted, “I’m gonna kill you AGAIN, Barbour, you fuckshit.”
Kane’s baseball bat met DHG’s abdomen again.
The Pker now screamed. “ARRRGHH. Fuck you, you little…”
I interrupted, “Look, I can’t stop my friend here. He’s a little… out of it since that encounter with the MOB. Please, tell us about ZPK.”
DHG looked up at me. “Look, I don’t know who they are. They just called me and said if I was interested go to the Elsworth Square School at night time. Seriously. They don’t mean shit to me. So, tell this fucker that I…”
I looked up. “Alright Kane- you can stop.”
“Right.”
Kane gave the baseball bat to Barbour.
Kane then looked down at the Pker, and told him, “We let you go after this.”
DHG turned red. “YOU FUCKING COC-“ was interrupted by the sounds of more baseball bat thudding on soft stomach.

As we exited the building, Kane said. “You make it sound as if I’m a savage.”
I looked back at him while walking. “I had to say something to scare him.
“Well, next time, don’t make me sound nuts.”
“This is Malton. Anarchy. Brings out the barbarism in all of us. Me, you, Barbour, that guy on the table. We’re all nuts inside. Some of us just hide it better than others. I mean, you’d have to be an angel, practically, to be an exception."

“True. So very, very true.”

Chapter Four: Live Man’s Feet

Unlike other towns, Malton was still plenty alive at night.
The howls of the undead, the cackling of gunfire, the crashing of barricades, the wails of dying survivors… Malton never was a quiet place.

Today, we waited in the Laurence Building, across the road and east from Elsworth Square School. It was a rare moment of silence.
Kane Izzy, Barbour, Otterslayer and Masterorion. I picked who I thought was ideal for a big Pker-killing spree.
Masterorion was there for long-range support, Kane Izzy and Barbour for charging in and dodging bullets, and Otterslayer for keeping us alive. Hopefully we would not need to use those skills. This was slated to be an observation mission, but as they say, plans rarely survive contact with the enemy.
I had checked back with Bdthemag earlier. According to our allies, whatever zombie infiltration behavior was in the area originated from the center of Foulkes Village, confirming what DHG told us. With that in mind, our observation team set off to the Laurence Building to watch.

Otter was using the binoculars. He whispered status reports about the overall situation as the rest of us stood guard about the room and in the hallway.
“There’s about three of them, and a large crowd of idle zombies outside…”
A few minutes passed. He continued. “The barricades are going down. I think they’re letting the zombies in….”
“…Holy crap! They *are* letting the zombies in!”
The rest of the team rushed towards the west side of the room for a closer look.
I whispered, “Get back to your posts, guys!”
Kane replied, “You’re doing what we are, Peng.”
“I’m the leader, Kane. I need the information!”
“Whatever.”
Everyone but me and Otter returned to position. I thought for a moment.
“Hmm… let’s send Barbour and Kane for a closer look. Obviously, any guards they have are watching the free running corridors…. And we don’t want to give away our location. You two, move to the carpark in front of the school. Hide there, and try to get in when the opportunity strikes. Bar, take my flare gun and signal us if anything goes wrong.”

Both of them reluctantly climbed out of the building and into the cold.
Masterorion mumbled, “Probably letting them in for some Thriller, that’s all.”
Otter laughed. “I can’t see anything from here. Most of the zombies have gone inside.”
Masteorion said, ”We probably should have sent a zombiefied AZS member there.”
“We can’t. The AZS are geniuses at staying alive.”, I replied. Otter chuckled. “Heh. I should know.”

I couldn’t see much of Kane and Barbour down below. I had to keep my head down, lest a Pker spot me through the window. I saw movement in the carpark and prayed that the people in the school didn’t.
The barricades started going up. Barbour and Kane were apparently waiting. I saw no movement, and neither did Otter.
I guess having zombies at their backs distracted the ZPK guards, since Otter saw a Pker on the second story with his head turned.

We waited. No sign of either scout.

After about an intense thirty minutes of hoping neither was caught, we heard a knocking at our barricades. Kane Izzy and Barbour climbed back up.
I asked, “What happened?”
Kane panted, “Insane, man. Just insane.”
“What is it?”
“We saw a Pker and a few zombies showing some zombies how to sneak around and another Pker lecturing more zombies on concealment techniques! Lecturing! A Pker!… Oh, and I brought you this. Got it off an unconscious guard.”
Kane handed me a pistol.
Barbour added, “We slipped out through a neglected section of the barricades, right before it became barricaded too heavily. Those fools never knew we were there. Except for the unconscious one… well, sir, what do we do?”
I thought for a while. “Maybe we could let Masterorion give them a parting gift?”
Masterorion failed to conceal a smile.
Kane shrugged. “Why not?”

Masterorion took aim and, twenty seconds later, fired a round into the guard that Otter spotted. The guard stumbled out of the building and fell hard onto the ground. Masterorion fired a second shot into him to ensure the job. Immediately, I saw movement on the third floor and pointed it out to M.O. Another gunshot and then another body slumped and fell from the building, shattering a window as it went.

“MO, change locations! Everyone else, retreat to HQ!” I yelled.
I stayed with MO as he fired another round, this time to no effect. The others hastily abandoned the room.
“Shit, I can’t see any more of them.”
I saw a few figures drop from the building into the carpark.
“Time to leave.” I said.

We quietly leaped back to Hinckesman Bank. Otter kept watch to make sure no one was following us. Fortunately, the ZPK people never showed up.
The others were rather surprised when they heard the news of ZPK.
Jonas remarked, “Pkers training zombies? That’s a new one.”
Bdthemag yelled, “Dammit ninja zombies!”
Chaos’ jaw dropped.
Dragei gave an incredulous stare. “Are you bullshitting me?”
Eventually we all faced facts. The Pker-Zombie alliance was almost certainly responsible for the new zombie stealth behavior, regardless of what Kane and Barbour saw. The survivors of Foulkes Village were now complaining of zombie ambushes and sneak attacks.

Dragei and Chaos laid out several options for us. First, we could disrupt the training sessions and figure out the locations through informants and careful scouting. Second, we could hunt down and kill individual ZPK members. Third, we could disregard the training sessions and figure out a way to directly detect zombies.
I discarded the second option. Far too difficult for little results. They’d just come back, and probably retaliate.
With that in mind, we voted. The first option became Plan A. The third option became Plan B.

The ZPK guys covered their tracks well after Masterorion’s turkey shoot. We tried to track down all the Pkers with ZPK cards, but they never showed up. Every Psychopath Killer we bagged was free of ZPK cards or any knowledge of ZPK. There were no further rumors about where the zombie infiltration was coming from.
“REAL MEN don’t run from justice!”, BD exclaimed.
“We’ve had no trace of them at all, sir”, Barbour reported. Dammit!

I guess we were back at square one. Almost.
I was usually rather pathetic at reconnaissance. I missed small details and often had to backtrack to investigate. This, however, was just too big to miss. A man in dirty grey clothing and a red scarf was removing some graffiti that read ZPK something something from the Hayden Building in Lockettside, where I was resting. I felt that he was somehow familiar. I approached the strange man.
“Excuse me, mister, what are you doing?”
As a response, the man immediately threw a knife into my stomach, and turned to run. He leapt out of the building, out onto the street, south to the Browne Museum.
My abdomen exploded in sharp ripples of pain. I ripped the knife out, hastily slapped a bandage over the wound as I ran, and leapt after him.
Dirty motherfucker dipshit! You’re not getting away like that!
Just as the man scrambled over Browne Museum’s barricade, almost out of sight, I took out a pistol and scored a hit on his leg’s calf. We were even now. With my quarry appropriately slowed down, I ran up the barricades and tumbled into the building. It’s an empty room, door slammed open, he’s went through there.
Rushing through the rooms, I saw him disappearing through a window. I ran after him, arms first, head, chest, and then my legs sailed through the damn window into Beacham Museum. I saw him pushing survivors out of the way as he went. Can’t shoot him now- might hit an innocent.
I ducked, jumped, spun, and dodged through the crowd of people. Grabbed a sheet of cloth off an exhibit case on the way.
Knife wound was getting to me. Pain creeping up on me. Fucking endorphins aren’t killing the pain! Fuck!
He ran up the stairs, me in pursuit. My feet pounding the unpolished floors, I used the cloth to secure my bandage in place. Don’t wanna be bleeding everywhere.
He leapt off the roof about thirty feet onto the Pursey NT, an almost impossible jump with a shot leg. I managed the jump five seconds after him.
I suddenly remembered I had a pistol. I fired off the five times at him and missed altogether. Damn my luck!
He didn’t show any sign of slowing down now. He kept running. I felt the wind blowing harshly on my face as we leaped roof after roof. Shit, this man is getting on my nerves! I fumbled with another pistol as building after building passed.
Bugby Place Fire Station. Managed to get my pistol out, this time it’s a clear shot, the fool’s running in a straight line. Eat lead! My first shot was true, and entered his lower backside just as he got his pistol out. He stumbled, allowing me to move in and fire into his arm, making him drop his gun. The guy rolled around, exposing his bloodied face.

Oh my god!

Chapter Five: Gashes are red, Infections are Blue

“YOU! Of all people, it’s YOU! FUCK, IT’S YOU!”
I immediately tried to stomp on his face. The man deftly rolled out of the way, and drew a fire axe.

“Alright, Will, let’s get this out of the way. Better yet, I dump your body out of the way.”
He was Will Troll. Traitor to the AZS and career murderer who delighted in the pain and rage of others. He had harassed the AZS four months ago, and I had enough of him a week after I met him. A weasel-like yet brutish, flat face. An ignorant, defiant expression at all times that rarely changed. Spiky, flat brown hair. Little pissant.
He laughed. “You and the Fuckwit Squad are scared of me.”
I drew and brandished my fire axe. Time to dance.
“We can discuss that over your corpse.”
Of course, no one in their right minds would engage in an axe-fight with guns around. I raised my pistol. He drew a shotgun. I got off a lucky shot in his neck as he ducked. He fell to the floor, blood rocketing out through his neck.
Even if I had knocked him out, I wouldn’t have let the fucker live long enough to tell me anything. I didn’t need the truth. He had to die.

I emptied the rest of the clip into him. I then took out a fresh pistol. I emptied another clip into the body. The kickback of the gun’s barrel was a pleasant handshake with happiness for five whole seconds. I kicked the body several times until it fell off the roof. Then, just for the hell of it, I screamed insults at some zombies below. They came to pound at the barricade, and some feasted on the body. I smiled.

That taken care of, I had to return to HQ. But only after I investigated what evidence Will was trying to remove. Naturally, it was gone when I came back to the Hayden Building.

I felt a sense of impending pain when I walked in. I looked behind me to see a woman with a crowbar swinging at my head. I blocked with my forearm, and the steel crunched against my bone, to great pain. I jumped backwards and took out my fire axe. Just as I recovered enough to fight back, the crowbar-wielder jabbed me in the stomach, a foot away from my stab wound. I doubled over in agony.
Crap. Just as she was about to hit me again, her own stomach burst in a light spray of crimson. She slumped over, and a similar thing occurred to her head. The body fell at my feet.
Chaostraveler brandished a shotgun. He then took out his bokken, bent down and slashed the body multiple times to ensure the Pker’s death. One always had to be sure, since Pkers were quite good at playing dead.
“Ms. Vixen. I’m sure she’s with ZPK. Either that, or she was free-running by while you happened to come along. Fat chance.”
I agreed. She was a ZPK agent coming by for some reason.

We dumped the body from the Hayden Building after snagging a few pistol rounds from Vixen’s backpack.
“Chaos, I found a lead. I encountered Will Troll, of all people, covering up some ZPK graffiti in this building.”
“Will Troll? The asshole who quit the AZS four months ago and could not stop swearing? The PKing-obsessed one?”
“Yep. The very same. I dumped his body after a short chase to Bugby FS.”
“Hm… we’re probably in trouble now. ZPK knows we’re after them, considering that we killed both Ms. Vixen and Mr. Troll. We have to do something about it.”

We leaped roofs back to Hinckesman Bank. No further trouble showed up on the way.
It decided to show up at our destination instead. The area was full of the “pom” of gunfire and the “clack” of hand to hand combat. It was lit up, and we could see trouble from a block away. “Shit!” Chaostraveler muttered as he drew a fresh shotgun and jumped onto the roof. With a somersault, he ran down the stairs into the building.
I decided for the more cautious approach. Drawing a pistol, I carefully walked down. It could be a trap. Or there were AZS members down there who would die without help. I took the more cautious approach anyway.
A Pker was slouching in the first room, his upper chest entirely annihilated. I carefully searched the body for readily available weapons. A loaded shotgun and two spare shells came up. My shotguns were out, so I put away my pistol and racked the shotgun.
The walkway outside the room seemed clear. I decided to peek carefully both ways. Nothing. I ran out of the walkway, slid down the stairs banister, and landed on my feet on the first floor. A bullet lodged itself firmly in my thigh. Shit! I forgot to apply first aid earlier! Pain was already a constant in my mind, and the new burst pain brought his girlfriend death with him. I felt myself sinking down for a split second, before I remembered there was no time to think to myself.
I leaped sideways. The next four rounds missed. The last bullet from the revolver never came out, as I gave the Pker crouching behind a file cabinet both barrels. It stunned him enough for me to climb over the top and split his head with an axe. I almost started to black out, but I managed to keep my wits.
I took cover behind the file cabinet and looked around. Masterorion, Masuhiro and Gunslinger all lay dead on the floor. They put up quite a fight, since they had quite a bit of spent ammo around their bodies. The screams and bangs of combat raged around me, but I couldn’t see anything to shoot.
Then I noticed someone I never saw before, probably a Pker, running over to Masterorion and bending down. Didn’t notice me, probably because he was getting greedy on Orion’s rifle. Working rifles were so rare in Malton.
I unloaded a pistol into him, drew another and unloaded another. The Pker fell down with a scream. I immediately heard some movement up above. More Pkers noticed the scream. I heard gunfire and felt the cabinet jar against my legs repeatedly. More bullets! I was in a horrible condition to fight. I hid myself behind the cover and reloaded my shotgun. This wasn’t too bad a place to die, in defense of my squad. I suddenly felt the bullets stop, and the metal box I was resting against came to a rest.

A strange gurgling sound later, I looked up and saw Jonas Mandrake having a duel with a Pker. I ran up that Pker from behind and gave him a solid chop to the backbone. He staggered, and Jonas took the opportunity to slash the Pker apart with his machete.
I nearly tripped over another Pker’s body with garrote marks on it, probably the source of the gurgling sound.
“Peng, we’re getting out of here! There’s zombies knocking on the barricades! Follow me!” Jonas was heavily wounded, like me. I had a first-aid kit, but I was saving that for infection. Still, if we died here, there would be less chance to kill Pkers. I bandaged up myself.
“Sorry Jonas. If I had another…”
“It’s alright. I have one too. Might as well.”
After we finished using the first aid kits, we dashed over to the roof. Chaos was there, unharmed and unarmed. He carried a few documents.

Suddenly, a Pker burst through the door, and lunged at us! Immediately he fell down to the floor with a ka-thump, and lay at rest. Boomtastic was splattered with blood, his right foot still raised, and Otter was holding Bdthemag’s zombified body and thrusting a syringe into his neck. Otter let the body slump to the ground.
Boom, as we called him, was known for his flashy shotgun skills and highly artistic graffiti. The former apparently served him well in his fight, judging from his coat’s blood splatters. Otter pointed to us and said, “Hind Bank is perfectly safe. Dragei told me about it earlier! What are we waiting for?”

A few minutes later, we entered Hind Bank. I was dead tired from all this damn fighting and running around. I immediately took a concrete nap on the dark floor. Boomtastic did the same. Otter, Chaos and Jonas at least had the energy to go upstairs for a proper sleep.

I woke up to find ten or so of the AZS surrounding a table, with Dragei holding up a torch to illuminate the map. From the smell of it, there was a lot of blood around, indicating that we had probably been bested in last night’s battle.
Otter was fixing up my wounds. I could tell it was Otter because my elbow rubbed against the otter-pelt vest he occasionally wore. Who knows how many otters went into that thing? In any case, I got up immediately as he finished.
I sensed it was early afternoon. It was a common survivor instinct, to be able to discern time indoors from the smell of the air and the ache in one’s bones.
“Hey guys.”
Doc Freak turned and said, “Peng.”
Bdthemag said, “Peng. I think Dragei has something to say!”
Dragei looked straight at me and said, “Peng, we have a situation. We’re outgunned and the ZPK is attempting to run us out of town. They’re succeeding, too.”

I gave him a look. “Dude, don’t start my mornings with ‘we have a situation.’ I just got up. I can’t think so well right now.”
Chaos stepped up. He held up something that, in the dim light, looked like papers.
“This is important, peng. I took these off a Pker’s body. You know what these are?”
I sighed. “Obviously not, Chaos. Do tell.”
“Listen closely, peng…and gather around, the rest of you… in this suburb… this is more than just a PK war. We’re taking part in a battle for all of Malton. And something even bigger! Everyone, earlier, back when I said we were in one *hell* of a situation…”
Chaos gave us a nervous look.

“*This* is a hell of a situation.”

Our jaws slowly dropped in unison...

Chapter Six: …But you’ll wish just those happened to you!

“Holy shit! They can’t do that!”
“Hell no. Just hell no.”
“… crap.”
“WE HAVE TO KILL THEM BEFORE THEY KILL US ALL!!!”
“That can’t be possible. No one could pull it off! No one!”
“This is bad. This is very, very bad.”
“We’re fucked. Well, peng, it was nice workin’ with you.”

I listened to everyone. I had to take charge of the situation.
“Camn down, people. It hasn’t begun yet. We can stop them! They can’t possibly get away with this. We’re going to stop them. And I know how.”

“How the hell, peng!” Chaos gave me a disbelieving stare. “They have all of this shit planned out, and we have what? We don’t even have a plan! And then if we don’t succeed, we’re all screwed! Infinitely!”
“Relax, Chaos, we just need to get the word out. Gather a few dozen survivor groups and hit them hard while they’re gathering strength.”
“Peng, it’s not as easy as it sounds. They have that *already* taken care of!” “What?”
“It says, here…ZPK’s has already thought of that! Here!”

Those documents Chaos showed me told a very deadly story.
But the context first- The southwest corner of Malton, New Arkham, was the least heavily populated suburb of Malton. It was calm at the moment, and given that it wasn’t at all a threat, Malton’s military shifted its strength to North Malton, where the Big Bash 3 was, making Old Arkham the weakest section of the quarantine wall. Yes, that wall, the quarantine wall, the big old wall that isolates Malton from the rest of the world. The weakest point of it was still an extremely heavily defended area, however, with enough machine guns, tanks and RPGs to destroy hundreds of zombies before they reached the forty-foot-high concrete wall. Still, whoever could pierce the wall would gain access to a lot of powerful weapons, valuable for a murder spree in Malton, and could spread the zombie plague to the rest of the world, causing total chaos and horrific death everywhere.

Under normal situations, even a thousand zombies and PKers attacking the wall simultaneously would fail to do any permanent damage. ZPK’s strike force, by implication of the documents, numbered somewhere around two hundred. However, they had the advantage of zombie infiltration tactics.

The documents didn’t tell much themselves, just the plan- All two hundred PKers and zombies would sneak towards the barricades. Some would be detected, but with zombie infiltration tactics, enough would get to the wall without being shot. The zombies would then climb over the walls, using the training the PKers gave them. That was key. Using that, they would then attack. The Pkers wore fresh military outfits and some somehow-stolen automatic weapons to create the impression of friendly fire, which would sow chaos throughout the barricades. The zombies would then destroy the barricades, and escape through the wall. Before the attack, they would gather in New Arkham. That’s it.

Now, from what I could tell, a few zombies past the wall would easily be destroyed by Malton’s military, so ZPK’s successful penetration of the wall in itself wasn’t too bad. However it would introduce the zombie virus to the quarantine army, likely weakening it further, and once word got out, it would soon encourage similar tactics by other zombies, probably puncturing the wall too many times to recover. The world outside was screwed if ZPK got away with it, and the green death would claim everyone as victims.

Most of the organized survivors in Malton, were busy suppressing the Big Bash 3, also a major threat to the barricades, given the zeds’ new knowledge of zombie infiltration. They couldn’t help us, and they were doing their part to defend Malton.

But we had to make an example of ZPK. We had to stop them from trying this plan. Maybe we couldn’t stop zombie infiltration tactics. But we had to defend the world outside or die trying. ZPK had to die.

We gathered allies. Most of the survivor groups we contacted were either too busy with Big Bash, or didn’t want to join. The ZPK plan we described seemed too far-fetched and well-thought-out for Pkers. And other survivors couldn’t just ditch what they were doing and attack, given that we didn’t even know when the wall invasion was going to happen. Most of them hadn’t even heard of ZPK. I couldn’t blame them. If I were in their situation, I’d call bullshit too. We were the squad crying zombie wolf.

Two of our allies took interest, although they didn’t quite believe us either. The first was Undead University, a survivor group dedicated to educating others about anti-zombie tactics. They were interested in encountering ZPK’s zombie infiltration tactics, and so they came to study the zombies with us. The other was Team Xtreme, a semi-nomadic bounty-hunter group. They simply heard the words “Two”, “hundred” and “PKers” and hauled ass across Malton over to New Arkham to get some.

In three days’ time, after both groups arrived, we would make our move in New Arkham.

But first things first. We were in Ruddlebank, an area with a still-significant ZPK presence. Some more intel would be necessary if we were to succeed despite our lesser numbers. We were planning to fight an entire army of zombies, after all.

Major Cinema held quite a few Pkers. Some Pkers who went by the names of FIDO, Little Bill Dagget, William Bill Munny, Captain Krunch and The Doctor were cowering there. MsVixen was definitely there too.

We had a lead. Like all good detectives, we pursued it. With a vengeance.

Unfortunately, the Psychopath Killers had hit many of us hard today after we left the HQ. A good number of our members were slain by murderers we had never seen before, probably ZPK members passing through town to get to New Arkham. I still managed to gather a decent strike force.

Otter and I would smuggle in a generator and fuel into dark Major Cinema, then start shooting. Chaos, Jonas, Barbour and TibbarRM, one of our newer members, would arrive as soon as it was lit and follow up. We would then retreat to a nearby cluster of dark banks and recover.

A relatively simple plan.

I picked up a half-full fuel can at Cosens Auto Repair. Otter told me over the radio he had a generator and ammo ready. Pity I had only my axe and a knife loaded. Still, it was go time.

Major Cinema was like any other movie theater in Malton- dark, creepy and with friendly and unfriendly figures shifting around and sleeping in the dark. It was difficult to fight effectively in the darkness, and easy to slip away. That’s why we brought the light.

I got a message from Otter. He had set up the generator. I crawled over to the power room, where it was. I took out a the fuel can and poured it into the generator’s thirsty mouth. It gave a reassuring hum, and the lights fizzled and sputtered to life. Immediately, we heard movement in the distance. The cockroaches saw light and were fleeing!

I grabbed my good fire axe, and Otter his pistols. We burst out of the power room and into the hallway and saw a startled Ms. Vixen. Otter immediately emptied a pistol into her, making several nasty wounds in her abdomen. I immediately lunged at her and hit her repeatedly with a fire axe, spattering fresh blood over its gray blade. She managed to parry the third strike with her crowbar, and wrenched the axe out of my hands. I took out my knife and stabbed her in the gut as she was recovering. Otter screamed, “Peng!” I immediately stepped out of the way, as Otter got another pistol out and fired. Ms Vixen’s head burst in a liquid flower of crimson and off-white petals.

We had no time to waste. Other PKers were fleeing the scene as well. Otter managed to shoot Captain Krunch twice in the leg as the murderer was fleeing. I jumped on the falling Pker and hacked him and his struggling arms to bloody shreds. A few shells zinged by Otter as William Bill Munny fired a shotgun at him to no avail. Otter shot back, hitting Munny in the chest. I immediately took the opportunity to lunge at Munny too, but he was filled with red splotches before I got to him. Barbour stood twenty feet behind the collapsing remains of the Pker, two smoking pistols firmly in his grip. Barbour gave us a nod. “Otter. Peng.”
The sounds of battle raged around us. We split up to bring as many murderers to justice as we could. I found TibbarRm taking cover behind a vending machine, as FIDO, a trenchcoated man, was pointing a shotgun in his and our general direction.
“I got him really badly hurt, peng. Finish him for me.”
I silently agreed. I lunged out from behind the vending machine, stepped forward, and threw my knife solidly into his ribcage. FIDO collapsed without much ado. I extracted the bloody knife.

I then realized I had been shot. I ignored the pain during the battles, but I realized I was bleeding heavily everywhere. Probably either FIDO or Bill Munny or both managed to hit me without me realizing it. I involuntarily sat down heavily, falling into darkness again… dammit…

I managed to wake up. It was a few hours later. My new clothes had already received a few bloodstains in Hinckesman Bank, and now they were caked with blood again. Lovely. Major Cinema was still lit, at least, and the fighting stopped. Jonas, with his Glock, was laying in the hallway, heavily injured but bandaged up, a Pker’s bullet-and-slash-ridden corpse propped up next to him.

“Jonas? Jonas!” He didn’t respond. Great. I searched the Pker’s body. I barely had the strength to do so. No way I could dump him. I found a pistol full of ammo, and a bunch of empty guns and junk. Nothing about ZPK. I limped out of the cinema. My second wind came just in time to let me leap out into Gover Bank, where it was nice and dark.

Just before I succumbed to my wounds a second time, I wondered what information the others picked up from the PKers.

From the corner of the bank, Otterslayer screamed, “Yes! ZPK, here we come!” I slept, satisfied.

I woke up. “Shit! I forgot my axe!”

Chapter Seven: Up and at ‘Em!

I forgot my axe. I would have to get a new one. There was no time to worry about that now, though.
We had intel to gather.

We managed to gather about six Pker corpses that day. Three of them, including Ms Vixen, revealed some scraps of ZPK information or some blood-stained ZPK cards, but we didn’t learn much. There were some incomplete copies of the documents Chaos found.
However, Otterslayer and Chaostravler picked up a map of New Arkham off of one Sarah Silverman, specifically describing in the Southwest corner of the suburb surrounding Club Chester. It was an excellent chance they would be hiding there.

In the meantime, we were inflicting heavy casualties on the PKers passing by Ruddlebank by ambushing them on the way to cinemas, and lighting up their hidey-holes with generators.
Eventually, the flow of PKers decreased to a dwindle. That probably meant they were mostly gathered and were going to launch the assault soon.

We were planning our assault when Team Xtreme showed up on the scene. Josh Clark, their leader, a heavily armed man with a crew cut and an army vest, stepped into our headquarters, Dudden Bank. A skull with a pierced forehead hung from his belt.
Trailing after him were “Katie”, “Metal”, “Jimmy”, “barz” and “lucky”, as their code names went, men and women armed to the teeth and sporting Cannonball Crew uniforms and army vests over civvies.

Josh looked around.
“Guys, where the PKers at?”
I pointed to a pile of Pker scalps.
“That’s most of the PKers in this suburb. We’re moving to New Arkham to intercept the suckers. We know right where they are. Oh, and we’re waiting on Undead University.”
“Good, good.” Josh replied. “So, when we do meet up with them, how do we fight two hundred PKers? That’s a lot of bad guy to handle, even for Team Xtreme.”
“Well, it’s not actually two hundred PKers. It’s two hundred PKers and zombies combined. Needless to say, we’ll be handling the PKers first. We can expect… maybe forty of them.”
“Forty won’t be a match for Team Xtreme and AZS.” Josh flashed a grin.
“Don’t forget the Undead University!”
Commander Behemoth stepped in. Appropriate to his name, he was a giant of a man who wore an open tweed jacket with a UU seal stitched on it, and a pair of small glasses. A professor who could crush a zombie’s skull between his palms.
Following him were what appeared to be seven or so college students with fire axes, shotguns and textbooks at the ready. His lieutenant, dracolisc, was in a graduation robe and holding a wicked-looking battleaxe
CB continued, “So… how do we plan to stop the silent undead scourge? I hear you have a pinpoint on their location.”
JC looked at him. “Well, peng here told us that we found the PKers.
“That’s not what we came here for. Peng, where are the silent zombies? We agreed to study them and create some new tactics. Don’t tell me we’re going on a wild goose chase for their so-called ‘quarantine wall attack’.”
I replied, “We’ll find the zed when we find the PKers. Come on. We have a few dozen juicy Pkers ready for the slaughter. What survivor group could pass up that? Let’s forget about the zombies for a moment and handle them later.”
CB pondered. “Well, I admit fighting their PKers sounds like a lot of fun… except that these Pkers are expecting combat and they’ll be heavily armed indeed. Probably well-supplied and coordinated with their zombie allies.”
“Well, we have to do something about it. We can find some more information about zombie tactics if we search the PKers’ bodies.”
“You have a point, peng. Let’s do this! To arms, Undead U!” Behemoth pumped his fist.
Josh lifted up a beer can. “To karma biting the murderers’ asses! With bullets!”
I concurred. “AZS, it’s go time!”

We had about thirty survivors in total. Dudden bank was packed. Otter, Metal and Chaos each picked up a generator. Me, barz, Dracolisc and Behemoth all had fuel cans.

Behemoth, Dragei, Josh, Jimmy and I were making plans in the AZS War Room, a little curtained-off area we set up in every HQ, full of maps and intel reports.
“So…we’ll light up and hit Club Chester. Only the logical thing to do.”
“Yes, but PKers tend to get smart in groups, likely they’ll scatter their strength into other buildings and have some method of signaling danger.”
“Don’t forget, guys, that they might have friendly zombies inside the buildings too, and perhaps survivor hostages. We have to be prepared.”
“Right-o. We send small scouting teams into each building, while sending our main attack force to Chester. We can’t do much about the zombies besides kill and dump, and hostages will, unfortunately, require flanking tactics.”
“Well, there’s also the force mult…

Suddenly, Kane burst into War Room with a huge sack of guns behind him! He tossed me an Uzi. A rare and valuable treasure. I goggled.
“Holy shit Kane! Where you did get these?!”
“Um… I’d rather not say. The ZPK have some of this stuff too, but not a lot.”
Josh grinned again. “Well, this simplifies plans. Hey, is that an M-16? I haven’t held one of these babies in a while. Gimme!”
CB grabbed another Uzi. “You’re probably right, Josh. We can afford to be less cautious with superior firepower. This changes things. Pity these things are so rare in Malton.”
I whispered, “Yep.”

Most of our alliance settled into Club Gellard in northern NA, in preparation for the big strike.

The forward recon team consisted of me, Barbour, Josh, Metal, Jimmy, Katie and Otter. Our most experienced Pker-killers. We crept into Tilke Bank in central New Arkham. Our job was to figure out how many PKers we’d have to handle and where they were. The bank was surprisingly clear of PKers. There were just a few stragglers from ZPK.

Josh whispered, “Okay guys, remember. We have automatic weapons. We can easily win shootouts. But remember our agreement. We don’t pull the trump card until it’s necessary. In fact, we probably shouldn’t even let them know we’re here. In the mean time, avoid Club Chester. It’s definitely a despicable hive crawling with scum and villainy. No need to look there.”
I nodded. The bank was dark and rather reassuring. I took a hasty head count of PKers.
We moved south to Small Street Fire Station. I took a minute to grab an axe that was lodged in the wall. The place had a few ZPK scum around, but from what we could tell, they were asleep. Convenient.
We moved on into Painter Street School. We snuck around. Mostly deserted. Odd. A zombie was wandering around the barricades, but didn’t notice us.
We quietly jumped into the warehouse north of Club Chester. I looked in from a crack in the ceiling as the others stood guard. It was loaded with Pker scum. A small stash of automatic weapons lay in the center of the warehouse.
I wrote down a rough guess of Pker numbers on my palm with an old pen, with the note, “Note: Access to auto guns.”
We moved into the warehouse west of Club Chester…
They had a pile of fuel cans in the west side of the building. Fuel cans! Dozens upon dozens of them! So many fuel cans! They were probably going to use them to set fire to or blow up the quarantine wall when they got there. The fiends! Waste of a good fire!

Without thinking, I jumped down, landing on some empty water jugs.
“Shit peng! Stop! Come back!” came a whisper from above.
Screw that noise! Those were MY fuel cans now!

I immediately put two bursts into a Pker sleeping on some crates. He fell off as a pile of red gunk.

Immediately, I heard shouting from above and below. I fired another burst into another Pker grabbing a shotgun. He fell down. Immediately I felt pain as a round entered my thigh. I retaliated, spraying a Pker’s guts across the floor. It felt good, wielding such power. Barbour and the others jumped down as well. The area was a-crack with lead, as the PKers were quickly overwhelmed and shot up.
I took my good fire axe to the skull of a ZPK radio transmitter operator. He slumped lifeless over the machine. A few zombies were in the warehouse and noticed the action, but soon received their daily dose of lead and fell equally lifeless to the floor.
Soon, the warehouse was entirely empty, save for us. We pushed the ZPK bodies out of the barricades.
“Peng, what the hell was that for?!” Josh shouted. “We just blew our cover!”
I hesitated for an explanation. “Er… well… there’s all this fuel over here. It’s ours now. The PKers were doubtlessly gathering it to burn the quarantine barrier down. We can use it, maybe?” Josh thought for a while. “Good idea. Nothing smells better like a roast PKer. But we’ll have to get more people to secure it. In the meantime, don’t get us killed peng!”
Barbour interrupted. “We need a distraction. We really need a distraction, since the ZPK counter attack will come soon. They’ll want the warehouse back.”
“Good idea”, I replied. “At the least, we’ll need backup.”
Jimmy was sent to retrieve the rest of the alliance. Otter patched up whatever little wounds we had received in the gunfight. We would have to hold the warehouse a while until the rest of the alliance relieved us.

Soon enough, zombies began knocking on the warehouse barricades, and we heard several pairs of feet land on the roof. The battle just began. I gulped.

Barbour, the designated marksman, carefully adjusted his assault rifle’s sights in the far corner of the warehouse.
Josh, Katie and I were fixing the barricades and dragging some boxes over for cover from the inevitable hail of bullets. We kept our guns ready, since there were dozens of zombies outside, from what I could tell.
Metal had a machine gun, and was propping it up on a small crate in the corner.
Otter was readying first aid kits and reloading his SPAS-12 behind us.

I silently prayed the rest of the TX/AZS/UU strike force would relieve us in time to use this mighty collection of flammables. Kevan saw fit to bestow it upon us, and I saw fit to defend it, so I could purge away the ZPK scum with it. They would eat sweet fire and choke on it! In the meantime, we were outnumbered.

A pair of boots came down from the rooftop.

Go time.

Chapter Eight: A Typical Day in the Calm, Civilized City of Malton.

A careful burst from Metal tore the boots in half.

Suddenly bullets ran like invisible rivers throughout the air. The PKers leaped down from the roof, pistols blazing. They were soon scrambling back up, as our cross fire ripped them apart. None of the PKers made it back up, their bodies instead slipping down in crimson trails down the stacks of crates.
The barricades creaked in pain. I immediately turned and sprayed my Uzi through a gap in the ‘cades, and was rewarded with the howls of angry zombies. Josh and Katie ran to the other side of the warehouse and did the same. Our hails of lead managed to keep the zombies away from the warehouse. Or we might have killed them all. Who knows.

We waited. ZPK didn’t make a move. It was getting quiet. I reloaded. I was beginning to think ZPK was scared, until something ripped through the barricades into my shoulder. I was knocked down immediately.
“Shit! Sniper!” I yelled, as I half crawled, half writhed in pain back to the others. From the feel of the impact, this was no civilian pistol or rifle. The PKers were bringing out their big guns too.
We looked around everywhere in panic.
Metal said, “Guys, stay away from holes in the barricades.”
Suddenly, a dozen PKers landed on the roof, and through the hole in the roof down onto the crates.

A veritable typhoon of bullets streamed everywhere. Josh swore non-stop as he leaped from cover to cover, firing rounds into hostile heads. Metal left her machine gun blazing away before she was forced back behind cover by a bullet to the neck. Otter leaped behind cover, and started patching up Metal.
Barbour and Katie joined the chorus of lead, and I, while bleeding all over the floor, simply fired at whatever moved that wasn’t behind cover. I got a Pker in the head, and felt some bullets ricocheting around me. I rolled behind cover, and in doing so, received a shotgun blast to the chest for my troubles. I blacked out a few seconds and woke up behind cover.

A tidal wave of lead swept past me, jarring the crates I was behind. I readied my fire axe and knife for the inevitable. Soon enough, a Pker leapt over my cover with a machete to finish me off, unintentionally offering his sweet succulent kneecaps for the taking. My knife said please and thank you, and the Pker fell over, and I then stabbed his head. I shoved the corpse over and took his AK-47.

I got up, severely injured, gun ready. The shooting had stopped. I saw Barbour stabbing a ZPK Pker repeatedly in the back, before letting the body fall to the ground. Otter and Metal were dead behind some shot-up crates and Katie, Barbour and Josh were, like me, limping and close to death. There were Pker bodies strewn everywhere. I grabbed several FAKs off of Otter and some PKers and fixed my injuries. The others followed wordlessly.

We only had time to halfway heal ourselves before the barricades started cracking open. I clambered up the ‘cades and furiously fired my AK into the crowd of zed at our gates. A sniper round missed me, and I jumped back down to save my neck.

A Pker snuck in while we were busy shooting up zombies and fixing ‘cades, and he fired a burst into Katie while her back was turned, and she crumpled to the ground and stayed down. Josh shot the man twice in both kneecaps, forcing him into kneeling, and Josh then fired into his head without hesitation. The corpse fell over.

We were outnumbered. Death was everywhere. I panicked. Outside, through the crumbling holes ripped in the barricades, I saw men from the darkness that was Club Chester ready to jump into the warehouse.
“Josh, what do we do!”
“I….I… screw this, we burn the warehouse now! Take ‘em with us!”
Josh lunged towards the fuel cans.
Suddenly, with a crack, the line of evil men from Club Chester twitched and staggered violently before falling hard onto the pavement below.

The cavalry was here.
Dragei, Commander Behemoth, Boomtastic, Dracolisc, Barz, Kane Izzy, Masterorion, Jimmy, Doctor Freakenstein… everyone came pouring into the warehouse. Some of us were injured on the way in, but for the most part, we were ready to kick ass.

We formed a circle around the fuel cans, and put boxes, forklifts and water canisters around us as cover. It was a glorious last stand. Josh, Commander Behemoth and I were in the center, protecting the fuel cans.

CRS5, one of the AZS’s new recruits, held a M1 Garand and sat behind cover next to me. He looked at me. “I didn’t sign up for this. It’s like a war in here.”
“Heh. Consider it a bonus.”
He smiled.

Just then, the barricades sighed and fell down with a horrific metal groan. The zombies burst through the barricades. A few PKers joined them, and shot at us.

Another typhoon of lead. The air was thick with bullets, knives and curses! The zombies were mowed down like so many blades of grass, but would not stop coming! I fired non-stop into the mob, screaming like a madman! It was a human wall of the living dead!
The zombies stormed over our secondary barricades, and the AZS, Team Xtreme and Undead University met force with force. The hurricane of bullets soon became a massive melee, as survivor, zombie and murderer grappled and slashed at each other.
It was an orgy of destruction, as the floor ran slick with red and green blood, and the noise was a red and black symphony of rage and death!

Kane Izzy and Dragei fought side by side with a flurry of steel blades, utterly pushing back the zombies on their end. Chaostraveler danced through the zombies with his axe and bokken, knocking zombies down as he went. Doctor Freakenstein calmly swung the butt end of his syringe-shotgun, cracking open zombies skulls as he went. Barbour let a zombie bite him, shot a round into its skull, and used the corpse like a shield. Boomtastic, Masterorion, Jimmy, Masuhiro, Barz and CRS5 created a side-by-side phalanx of knives, and near-simultaneously ripped approaching zed to bits. Jonas tripped up zombies with his machete, and Bdthemag finished them with his knife.
Commander Behemoth simply lifted a zombie and tossed it like a ball into its comrades, knocking down a wave of them at once!
Josh ripped off a zombie head, and shoved another towards me, which I decapitated.

We took heavy casualties. Bodies fell everywhere, and I could feel the slick of blood under my feet as I grappled. The screams and groans were non-stop, and I could barely tell who was in front of me. All I knew was that it was definitely undead. It slashed my arms as I grappled with it, until I managed to kick it away enough to split its head with an axe!

A Pker got lucky and shot Josh in the chest. Josh grunted and staggered, before throwing his knife square into the Pker’s eye, dropping the bastard like a stone.
“I can’t go on… peng… we’re losing! Here!”
He tossed me a lighter. I caught it. It was blood-slicked and grey.

It was a rare thing to see a lighter, much less hold one. They were worth three times their weight in ammunition, for the soft warm fire they gave. Ah, the memories. I used to have my own lighter when the apocalypse happened. Then one day… I had to…

I snapped out of my reverie. The AZS, Team Xtreme and Undead University was still fighting hard, but about a hundred or so still-walking zombies swarmed towards us, climbing over piles of their dead and our dead. It was a sea of dead men!
We simply couldn’t hold them off. Only five of the alliance was still up and standing, and the blood-covered claws of the zombies advanced upon us like a tidal wave. Blood was everywhere. I had a job to do.

I kicked over the fuel cans. I struck the lighter wheel with my thumb. I dropped the lighter. And death came pouring out of the cans.

The fire spread. The zombies howled in fear, and withdrew. The PKers who were left fled in panic, firing behind them. I took a hit in the stomach and fell over backwards. I could feel the flames about to reach my head.

I immediately stood up and ignored my wounds, purely out of rage. You boys wanted fire. Now you get fire. I grabbed my fireaxe and plunged it into flame, and then leapt at the zombies, axe lifted over my head! They recoiled at fire, the great force they were not used to! Malton was mostly fire-proof, and zombies grew soft before the flame. Dragei, Josh, Behemoth and the others left alive did the same with their weapons, and charged with me. The flames spread everywhere. I could feel it eating my legs, but I cared not. For Malton, and for the World Outside!
Zombies burned. They burned to ashes. I split a zombie’s head open and embers flew everywhere. The world turned red before my flames. The blood on the floor bubbled and steamed and it was met by new blood, as I ripped the zombie horde to bits.
I hacked. I bashed. I branded my mark on the living dead. Evermore, their fellow ZPK scum would know that penguinpyro had left them charred. They recoiled at my branding.
I wrestled with the dead. They burned and screamed in horror. Weaklings. Too weak for fire. I slammed my flaming axe into the spine of a zombie, rending it in half. There was no force that could stand up to fire.
Dragei ran past me with a flaming claymore, equally abandoned in his anger. He ripped a zombie’s head off, leaving a flaming headless corpse. Behind me, I heard the very same flame-fueled screams of the undead.
Suddenly, my legs gave way. I was too badly burned. I saw the spreading flaming fuel rush past me and ignite the entire zombie horde! The screams!
I involuntarily kneeled to the ground, but I felt little pain. I fell over into the flames with a grin. Penguinpyro had lived before he died.

Chapter Nine: Pain is in the eye of the beholder

I stood up and took a deep breath. The usual routine. Some moldy gunk from the cemetery on my back. A feeling of forgetfulness. Aches everywhere, and a good old hole in my back where the needle went in.

I was surprised to find my clothing was heavily burnt, but I was only slightly charred. The burns still hurt though. Pretty badly. I managed to crawl back into the nearest building with low enough barricades, Tilke Bank.
After some wandering around and a brief change of clothes in a Police Department, I bumped into the whole gang partying in the Heard Arms, in the northern border of New Arkham.

Chaostraveler slapped me in the back.
“Hey, welcome back from the inferno, peng. Have some tequila and pie!”

Everyone from Undead U, Team Xtreme and the AZS were sitting at tables, talking and toasting with beer in hand. There was a table full of pies in the corner. I took a pie. It was full of fruit. I sat at what I assumed was the “Officers” table, with Josh Clark, Commander Behemoth, Dragei, Doctor Freak and Barbour chatting and swigging tequilas. From the looks of it, Barbour and Josh Clark also had the same lightly-burnt, slightly moldy texture on their skin that I did.

“Hey peng,” Josh made a dramatic sweep with his hands. “We won! Join the party!”
“ZPK’s crippled, from what we know, not really defeated” Dragei said. “That said, we kin sit back an’ relax. It’ll be a while before they get up back ag’n. Bdth’mag says their numbers are down ta fifteen.”
“Um….D, Barbour, Josh, CB, why are you all not crispy right now? And why am I lightly singed? I remembered falling into some flames…”
“Commander B an’ I had some spare AP. We dump’d ye an’ th’ rest of the strike force outa th’ buildin’, outa th’ flames.

We talked for a while. About plans for the future. About our past adventures. About the RRA. About our least lovable PKers. Good times.

A minute later, a strange group of men rudely burst in through a pair of open windows.
One of them, a man I recognized as one Harald von Holzapfel, stepped forth and pointed at Kane Izzy, sitting on top of an empty table.
“There you ah! You ah surrounded, you errogant… leetle…… thie-”
He made that screechy, awkward scream, the one that people who realize they are utterly fucked make.
Kane immediately drew an MP5 on Harald. The thirty heavily-armed men and women in the pub followed his lead.
A brisk unloading of lead later, we dumped about four bodies. Kane, rather uncharacteristically, punched out Harald instead of shooting him. He even used a FAK on him to keep him awake.
I was about to question why, until Kane pulled out a baseball bat. He smiled.

The screaming didn’t really detract from the atmosphere. We kept talking throughout the night, getting as drunk as people who had to search for cans of beer could get. Josh was about to describe a particularly gory siege of Fort Perryn when the lights went out.
“So, the M.O.B. was on its way when…uh oh...”
“Relax, Josh. Pro’lly some griefer or sometin’. We’ll get ‘im when we see ‘im.”
“Right. So, the M.O.B was on its way when we got the generators back up. But then, these crazy Pkers just kept…”

The conversation continued. The party ended well. I shook Josh’s hand.
“*hic*Man, we have to do thish again. Call meh if you need Team Ekshh…treme to blow away bad guys. Lotsa bad guys. And, thanks for the M16s… and shtuff. Hopefully, we have enough ammo in ‘em to deal wit’ what we *hic* are abouta do next.”
“No problem, Josh.”
I shook hands with Commander Behemoth.
“P, we’ll call you when we’ve devised a solution. In the meantime, Rhodenbank needs us. I had to say, though, that was one hell of a fight. Feel free to call us if you need a hand again.”
“Thanks, Behemoth.”
The two teams departed for the east and north, leaving the AZS, hung-over and happy, to sleep sound in the dark tavern.

I felt… fulfilled. It was the first time in months we had a victory that great. And I got to play with fire. I relaxed, my back eased into my chair.

The room abruptly burst into a chorus of bullets. I felt a deep pain in my gut and immediately knew I had been shot.
I threw myself onto the ground, belly to the ground, and grabbed a chair in front of my head as cover. Oh shit it hurt.
I heard screaming and yelling and the “rat-tat-tat” of automatic fire. Barbour was behind me, returning fire.
Something sailed through the air. A grenade! My god! How did they get a grenade! I immediately leapt up from cover, kicking it away as I pulled my Uzi. The area was filled with shooting. I fired blindly in the direction of the bullets as a hot flash of shrapnel and splinters burnt my chest and face.
I rolled behind another table. Rather, I tried to roll. I stumbled as a bullet embedded itself in my leg. I tripped, and thankfully, the fall made my head fall below the path of several bullets. Prone, I fired my Uzi indiscriminately and was rewarded with the sound of impact. I kept firing blindly, until the Uzi ran dry with an ominous “click.” Shit. I pulled my AK out and hit a figure running towards me in the head, hoping it was an enemy. I saw a few other AZS engaged in melee fights around me. Something hit me in the head, and I fell into darkness.

I woke up. Immediately, my head burst into a raucous symphony of pain, complete with the melody and counter melody of hangover and head wound at full tilt. My chest was little better.
First face I saw was DHG. Huh. Odd. Next to him was Will Troll and a very-beat-up looking Harald von Holzapfel.

Oh shit.
There were eight people in the room, five of whom I recognized as ZPK Pkers. I was tied to a chair, with a beat-up Kane Izzy and a nearly-dead Barbour in similar situations by my sides. Kane was barely awake, his face stained with bruises and blood.
The rest of the AZS was probably dead. The PKers were stitched and bandaged up. I still smiled. Fighting twenty heavily armed guys isn’t good for your health, even for ZPK.

I saw DHG take Kane’s (or was it Barbour’s?) baseball bat out. Well, double shit. I braced myself for the blow.
It stung. It stung more than it hurt. I felt my blood and spit spray everywhere, but it could have been a lot worse. Bastard probably just didn’t know how to hit right. Without thinking, I yelled at him.
“Oy! Learn to swing, girly man!”
The next blow was much worse. I felt dizzy, and the symphony of pain emerged into its louder second movement. I even felt my chair creak.
To my sides, I heard Kane scream and curse after a thud. Harald was busy too.
My third blow was about the same as the second. I felt about ready to drown in my own blood. It was welling up in my nose. DHG didn’t say a word, and I couldn’t see his expresssion, my vision throbbing in red and black. I suppressed a yell of pain. The chair creaked again.
Through the pain, something, other than the bat, struck me. This chair was shot up! It had bullets in it. It creaked for a reason. I took immediate action.

“Motherfucker! Hit me in the belly like a real man. Or are too chickenshit to hit hard enough? Hit me!”
Got what I wanted. I nearly vomited into my mix of blood and spit.
My abdomen smashed backwards into the chair. It creaks. Part of it collapses.
I immediately rolled over on my back, half-tied up, as the chair fell apart. I heard a gun being drawn. Crap. Didn’t think this through at all. My head was nearly split but I somehow managed to parry the fourth blow with a kick. Couldn’t see a thing, bleeding everywhere!
I managed to extract my hands from the ropes into my pockets. I didn’t expect to find weapons of course, but the lighter was still there, along with most of my personal effects. It was a split-second decision.
I whipped out the lighter in my right hand, two seconds before DHG swung the bat a fifth time. I whipped out my spray can in my left hand, one second before DHG swung the bat. I felt the bat narrowly whoosh by my head as DHG was distracted by the gout of flame from my hands. I released another burst, and DHG started screaming. Suddenly, a bullet whizzed by me.
My eyes recovered enough to see a flaming man with a baseball bat wildly flailing around me. I rolled behind DHG, and saw him flinch as an unwisely-placed bullet, meant for me, entered his backside. I kicked him away, and then used my very last reserves of adrenaline to break through the pain, stand up and lunge at the others! The flames told hold of the unworthy with a vengeance! They flailed and screamed and one of them even turned back and ran. The flames told me not to worry, as they would take care of the rest, and I nodded my assent. There would be no holding back.

I kicked at Kane’s chair as I spouted flame at the ZPK PKers, so that, hopefully, it would break too. It cracked a bit. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Kane wriggle out, gradually.
My spray can ran out, just as the last of Harald and the Pkers burnt to a crisp. The flames were good to me. Kane quickly flipped up to a standing position and began untying Barbour. I dropped my spray can, and picked up a burnt sub-machine gun.
The flames were everywhere. They were so pretty, but we had to give them some distance. Barbour, Kane and I rushed out of the smoky room. The fire didn’t spread out of the room. Stupid fireproof city. There were a lot of familiar faces among the many dead bodies in the Heard Arms, although evidently some unfamiliar PKer bodies were among them. I decided there weren’t enough bodies. We grabbed FAKs and patched ourselves up as we ran.
We headed to the roof of the tavern. I saw a figure in the distance, smoking and running east towards the Swaine Library. I squinted. Will Troll. Last member of ZPK.

He had to die. ZPK was not over yet. I ran.